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Woodland birds - such as woodpeckers - face a quickening decline in the UK, according to data recently released by Government. Their numbers are down by 37% since 1970, and by 15% in just the past five years. Farmland birds have done worse since 1970, with a 60% drop - but their recent rate of decline is a little bit slower. Still the news is bad - all the curves are going down.

'Let the air be filled with birds' are God's words in the opening chapter of Genesis - and the Bible positively teems with them. There are owls, partridges, swallows, eagles, peacocks, vultures, pelicans, storks and more - though no woodpeckers as far as I know. But why should we care about birds and their numbers? Why should we want the air to be filled with birds?

I suppose you could say that there is a prosaic and a poetic answer - not in competition with each other, but rather different. The prosaic answer would tell us all about biodiversity and ecosystems, about how birds are part of the complex web of interconnected organisms which together maintain the healthy functioning of the environment. The poetic answer would be that birds in the abundance and vitality represented in the story in Genesis are a gift to us, captivating the human heart and imagination.

The flight of birds has always stirred our wonder - we who are earth bound, with feet of clay, look up in astonishment as, in all their lightness and grace and beauty, birds ascend far into the skies and far above the troubles of the world. Psalm 55 is a great lament in the midst of which the author cries out 'Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then I would fly away and be at rest.' But birds are not only escape artists, they can appear as messengers too. Angels, those in between beings, come equipped with wings and feathers, and the holy spirit itself is typically depicted in Christian art as a dove. Birds move between heaven and earth, up and down, overcoming a physical and metaphysical divide which to humans is a challenge and a barrier.

'I caught this morning morning's minion' - so begins Gerard Manley Hopkins great poem entitled the Windhover, or kestrel. The tragedy is of course that as bird numbers decline such sightings as this, which stirred Hopkins' heart, become all the rarer. Many many people do care about birds - the RSPB is one of the largest charities in the U.K. But if we do care, it is not just because birds have an important place on any environmental balance sheet. It is also because if we attend to the wonders of the life of birds, as of the rest of the natural world, we will realise that what we have here is not a mere resource but a gift.

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